These are notes from an old coaching seminar, I thought they might be interesting to some.

The "Wall" is actually a protective process, where we decide to put a part of ourselves away from public view so we won't get hurt. In prolonged circumstances, we can put more and more of ourselves behind this wall. Finally, we become nothing more than a collection of automated responces to others, while we remain safely tucked away in our own little world.

Obesity nearly always becomes an outcropping of this process. Our bodies take the queue from our minds and decides to keep everything "in" as well.

In Recovery, there are two types of obese people observed. The ones who put up the "wall" first and the weight problem followed and the ones who gained some weight first then built their "wall" which led to more weight gain.
The recovery for both are very different, so at some point it's important for each of us to know which came first in our own situation.

The Weight first MOs Recovery:

The MOs, who put a little weight on first then put up the "wall", have a much simpler recovery. Just losing the weight is usually enough to put them back on track. They don't usually have significant problems adjusting socially with their new bodies. Once they understand their original vulnerability, they can correct it and move on with their lives.

The "Wall" first MOs Recovery:

This recovery is more complex. Partly, because it usually begins in early childhood. These MOs lose the weight and feelings of vulnerability around others begin to surface again. Recovery includes understanding the reasons the wall was built and addressing these reasons and finding better solutions.

Whichever type recovery you face. The objective for both is to stay awake and alert to your situation and how you're responding to it. Be alert!

_____________

I am a "wall" first MO and I can agree that the recovery is complex for me, but I am covering terriotory I don't feel I'll ever have to revisit so I definitely think it's worth it.

What about you? Which do you think came first for you and how are you dealing with it.

This is fabulous!!!!


For me... the wall came first then the weight. The wall and eating for comfort at age 9 with my arm stuff... then the weight followed!

Wow... this is me to a Tee. It was early childhood. I know my reasons and inner demons for turning to food. And that is why I go to therapy. I knew I would never be successful with my WLS if i didn't face my demons head on. It is rather hard and well i am dealing with one right now... Can't beat this one off with a stick anymore.


Can I crawl under my rock now?

The WEIGHT came first...slowly after years of overeating...then I was so embarrassed by my outter look I kept everyone at arms length and inside berated and hated myself for allowing myself to get to that point.

I guess I felt like NO ONE would love me if I looked like that...or I do remember feeling HOW COULD YOU LOVE ME when I look like this?

Im with MARLA...THANK GOD FOR COUNSELING and the strength that gave me the courage to make the choices that led me to where I am today!!

No WALLS...just ME (SUNSHINE) in the RAW!!! Normal with my ups and downs and the knowledge to KNOW when to reach out and ask for help and/or SEEK IT!!!

GREAT PIECES LEE!! And you ask if you FIT IN? PALEESE!!! YOUR FULL OF WHAT THIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS ABOUT!!

WE LOVE YOU!!

Julie

I was chubby from the get go, so the weight came first. My wall really set in during my twenties and especially my thirties. I don't know that it is all that simple to fix...just losing the weight. The wall was up for a very long time, like half my life. It may just take another decade or two to come out from it entirely!

Hey Lakeratlee,

For me, the wall came first. My father was killed in a car accident when I was 16 and I went from 120 lbs. to 200 lbs. in less than a year. And I've been struggling with my weight ever since. There were times in my adult life where I was able to get down to 140 lbs., but never maintained it more than a couple of years.

However, because I was almost an adult when I ballooned up, and had periods of being a "normal" weight in my 20s and early 30s, my problem is that I didn't see myself as MO...even when I was almost 300 lbs. A few years ago, I was watching a video of my sister's wedding and didn't recognize myself. I was twice the size of everyone else at the reception. I was in complete shock, filled with shame and self-hatred. Which sunk me even deeper into depression.

My recovery has been a long, tough one and it's only just begun. This is a great topic! A lot to think about.... --Kathy

This is so interesting and so deep. Lee, your posts this week are really making me think!!!! Thank you for such thought provoking things!

In my case the wall came first. I was not a heavy child. My wall started when I was 18 and newly married.

Even though I'm thinner now, my wall is still there and it scares me that I will someday build it "bigger" and hide behind it once again.

I'm with Kim, I think it might take years or maybe forever to get rid of the wall.

And I agree with sunshiney Julie, you are what this neighborhood is all about.

Hugs to you my "thoughtful" friend!!!

Great post, Lee!

For me, Weight came first -- I was a chubby little girl. So it was the Weight, ridicule from other kids and disapproval from my parents -- particularly my dad. So I built the Wall to protect myself...

In my heart, I was always thin, healthy and dancing through life! My body wouldn't allow it.

Maybe that's why it has been easier for me to maintain than it has been for some of you. It's no walk in the park for me, mind you! I still want to reach for food, but my drive to comfort myself with food is overridden by my drive to dance. The dance wins out! But it's frequently a tough struggle.

Lee -- you have raised a GREAT question this Good Friday! Thank you for giving us all something to really ponder!

Judy

For me it is definitely the wall first. For me childhood wasn't so pleasant. I do not have happy memories and events led me to "protect" myself from the world. What better way to do that than to add 150 lbs to your body....

funny how your mind works sometimes...

Whoa! This is heavy stuff.
I think it was the weight first. When I hit puberty in 6th grade I quickly went from a size 10 little girl to a size 16 big girl. I felt awkward and began to be teased. Until then I was pretty happy-go-lucky. It just kept getting worse from that point on.

I've missed you Lee.

Yep, good stuff. I think that I must have been a wall first. And I wonder if very sensitive people tend to have that in common. I know for me, I was really freaked out when boys and GROWN MEN started to notice me at 11-13 years of age. I was not ready for that kind of attention at all. I didn't really plan to become obese, but I can see now how natural of a reaction it was. I put it together in my subconscious that I would get less attention if I was "undesirable". I didn't really become obese until later, but the seeds were there and waiting for the trap to be sprung.

I've been thinking and thinking and I don't know which one I am. I was not a chubby little girl. I was athletic, always an outgoing child...a b--l buster sort of girl But around 3rd grade I began putting on weight and I was finally diagnosed with my thing. But even though I was heavier than other girls, I was also taller, athletic...I did face ridicule but...WAIT! I just figured it out...definitely weight first then "wall" for me..lol. I was unhappy inside but I never let people see it. I was always athletic, earned an athletic scholarship to a Big 10 school, top grades, fairly popular..that sort of thing. I never let people see how miserable I was.

Whew...even though I've had therapy, both associated with surgery and also on my own, I never really figured it out. Or perhaps just reading your post put it in a different perspective. I don't know....either way, thanks for making me thing about it.

You know, even with the success I've had both professionally and with weight loss/personally, there's a part of it still there. Well, now I have something to work on. Thanks, Lee!

Mere

You guys absolutely rock my world!!!! If you haven't already, read through the responses here. What a rich tapestry all of you create.

I put my wall snuggly in place when I was five. In the process of my own recovery, the mystery of walls is we also use them to block things from ourselves. I've discovered many things about myself I had forgotten. I threw them back there so long ago. I'm not going to tell you removing the wall is easy, in fact sometimes it's scary. I put a lot of emotion behind my wall too. It bubbles up and I have to let it go like so much stale air escaping a sealed room, but then I find something left there long ago. Something that was precious to me once upon a time. I placed it there to protect it and I'm seeing it again for the first time in so long. One of them for me was the joy I always got from writing. I feel like I'm coming home to myself, at last.

If you can share, I'd like to hear about some of things you found. If you haven't looked yet, just know it's all safe as it was the day you put it back there. Many of them will be things you loved about yourselves that you wanted to protect.

Happy Easter to all of you!!!!!

GEEZ!.... I almost forgot

NO Marla! You can't crawl back under your rock!!!!!!!

and have a very blessed Passover! and onceagain Mazel Tov!

Ineeded to bump this because I added a followup question........ see above

hmmm... not so clear cut for me. I think my whole system was put togehter in
a less than conventional way. My depression/ wall has always been there, from
my earliest memories as a young child. Definitely biochemical rather than situational...
As I grew up... periods remained terribly irregular, weight was always a major issue
physically and socially. So it was safer behind the wall. My whole life has revolved around
abnormality... depression, over weight, addiction, adopted, left HANDED for gosh sakes!
So, I don't exactly know what to answer here other than perhaps the wall and the
abnormality were always there.

Is the question, what have I found? What did I seal up? I want to make sure I am addressing the right question, the right spirit of the question...

What thoughts feelings or even talents and abilities have you found that maybe you had forgotten about.

In my case, at the age of 10 I was an avid writer. I enjoyed the feeling of finding just the right word that captured how I felt about something. In the sixth grade, an English teacher didn't believe I was writing what I was turning into her. She singled me out in the class and held me up to ridecule. She called me a liar and a cheat. She held me in ridicule the remainder of the year. The incident isn't important in my present life, but the decision I made guided me for a lot of years.

I long ago decided I didn't like being singled out, for any reason. So in this instance, I destroyed my 2 yrs. of writing and decided it would be best not to share this part of myself with anyone. Over the years I forgot and went on with my life.

In recovery, once I let the fear and great sadness go. There was my joy of writing again.

Wall work is a bit challenging. With wls it presents itself in many people as depression (not everybody), at some point after surgery. It's commonly mistaken for depression, but actually, it's a sign of recovery. If you can let those feelings pass and not attach to them sometimes a memory or ability comes back to your awareness. It's sort of like cleaning out a refrigerator, every now and then you open a lid and ...OH MAMA!!!... you hurry and pitch the jar in the trash. That's pretty much what the process is like for me. I don't know what your process is like.

As it was explained in session: The surgery gives a break from our chemical addiction to food long enough that our emotions sort of "thaw out". If you have good professionals behind you they can spot the signs and guide you through, if not, it's easy to start eating again and go back to the old eating cycle. I think this is where good aftercare is crucial.

Well, I digress, I hope I made it a bit clearer.

Yes, this is what I imagined you were saying. I think that what was stifled in me that is beginning to reemerge is my interest in talking to people, and my natural curiosity about the world and how it works. When I built the wall to protect myself I was trying to avoid confrontation, chaos and the pain of rejection. Now I'm finding that I'm not so afraid of what people think of me, that I'm able to truly open my arms and take the world in, that I'm able to really listen to what people are saying because my ego is not invested in my response to them.

I'm not as afraid of people. I'd built that wall when I was very very young. I used to sit in the car and wait while the family went into restaurants because my dad wanted to sit at the counter and I could not bear the idea of possibly sitting next to a stranger and couldn't bear the ridicule of admitting my discomfort.

My older sister told me that I was molested in my childhood by strangers--I have no memory of this. I do have memories of being abandoned and lost in crowds. I think this helped build the wall.

Sandi,

Let me qualify my statements a little better. What I'm sharing from the "coaching sessions" come from the psychologist who headed the Coaching for Victory at the hospital I went to. These are observations she has made from running the program for 5 yrs and her additional background experience in treating addiction.

She's merely teaching us how to read the signs of recovery and follow our own path. I say this because these views aren't widely shared in the psychological community yet. It's all too new. So individual aftercare programs are going to vary drastically.

Lee...you are saying things that make me go hmmmmm...mind you..in a good way.

Its weird with me because I can remember things that we good about that little girl, however, every good thing that was being recognized by that little girl was being corrupted by my fathers new bride. I think sub consciously that little girl hid VERY deep inside and was determined not to let anyone see her.

Vulnerability is not a good feeling to experience..I don't believe anyone likes it....and if at all possible...they avoid it at all costs. I think its about learning as you grow that vulnerability changes and morphs into other things and its important to look at those vulnerabilities and adjust them and analyze them.

Rambling here...its just that as we grew up, maybe we never reevaluated what made us so scared to reveal ourselves?

Well, basically we live based on a lot of that early programming, it's just in the case of MO. That programming is life threatening so it has to be identified and changed. As little kids it was a survival technique, but it's not anything we need anymore. Below is a link to a post I made over a year agao when I first started attending I don't know if this will make it any clearer or not.



Coaching for Victory, session 1

This has really made me stop and think. I'll try not to make this post too long ok?

I'm a weight first then the wall person. I was a normal weight as a kid until I hit puberty then people started telling me I was getting fat. I look at those photos now and say "I was not!" I had a weeeee pot and that was all but the damage was done. My mother was/is a yo-yo dieter for as long as I can remember so weight was a big issue for her. I felt rejected by my father as a teenager too. Especially when he left us and didn't have much contact over my teenage years even though he lived in the same town. This really does effect a girl. When I met my first husband at 16 I weighed about 134 pds. We moved in together just over a year later and I started putting on weight. I was about 144-150 pds when he started telling me I was fat. Well this started a very long and slippery slope in to obesity. By the time we separated when I was 23 I weighed 210 pds and my confidence and self image were shot. I lost about 20 pds through the stress of the separation/divorce but it soon went back on and a heap more over the next 20 years. When I was 29 I went to Jenny Craig and lost 80 pds in 1 year. People commented then that I was back to my old bubbly self that I was when I was younger. Basically more confident, outgoing and cheeky. Over the following years the weight went back on and more. You know how it goes. As much as I love my DH I now realise that his acceptance of me "warts and all" has aided in my road to 296 pds. I was about 210pd when we met. I always felt that I remained confident, outgoing and cheeky in spite of my weight because as I matured I didn't feel I took on board what people thought of me. I thought I was ignoring how society treated me as a fat person. That they treated me just fine.

Well have my eyes been opened in the last couple of months. I HAD built another wall. People did treat me differently because I was fat. I can see that the wall is crumbling fast. I am the happy, confident, outgoing and cheeky Barbara that I was when I was young. I love me so much! The wall is coming down and I hope it will stay down.

Just lost a HUGE thoughty post! waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I can't go though it all again.
Basically... my experience with people reacting so differently to me at differing weights has
made me more distant to others and self protective.

but I HAVE to tell you that I think your your son and his fiancee are absolutely stunning!

As far as the weight is concerned the wall came first. I was raised by a very controling mother who I was never good enough for, all her attention was always focused on my older brother. If it had not been for my dad my childhood would have been a diaster. To get away I got married at age 20 and moved 3000 miles away. Finally after 20 years I was free to do what I wanted. I ate whatever I wanted without someone standing over me criticizing me. As a young married couple that was our form of recreation to go out to eat. I yoyoed back and forth for 5 years then got pregnant, I didn't put on much weight being pg it all came afterwards. Then my second son died as an infant and I went into a depression especially when I couldn't get pregnant again. I subsituted exercise in the place of food and got to my lowest weight yet. Finally after 6 years I had another baby, then another 2 years later, so on came the weight and it stayed this time. Our oldest son had a lot of problems and I was overwhelmed as my dh is a workalcholic and his idea of dealing with a problem is to avoid it, so I was basically a single mother to my 3 sons. It wasn't until my knee started causing major problems and I couldn't get around that I really started to be concerned about my weight. Before I really didn't care I had given up and figured that if people didn't accept me like I was to h*ll with them. Guess one of the reasons I've never been reallyconcerned about my weight is I tend to surround myself with other people who are also MO. Two out of three of my close friends are heavy as is my dh. That sounds like a good thread.

Denise